


Don't give it a hand, offer it a soul (leave it to the land, this is what it knows)

by sinisterkid92



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, F/M, Kylo noticed Rey before she found BB8, Reylo - Freeform, TFA happened a little differently, alternative universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-22
Updated: 2017-05-22
Packaged: 2018-11-03 16:27:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10971018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinisterkid92/pseuds/sinisterkid92
Summary: “She stayed longer than she should have. Longer than a good person probably would; but he became the one place in her life that gave her meaning.“Years ago, he’d found her on the desert planet Jakku, a simple scavenger doing her best to survive. For a while he was her teacher, her lover, and then he was her enemy. Now, she has returned to the planet to escape all memories of him.





	Don't give it a hand, offer it a soul (leave it to the land, this is what it knows)

**Author's Note:**

> Hiya! This is my first Star Wars fic, I figured it was time after watching TFA maybe 20 times. I'm not hugely into the entire franchise, when I get more time I will do a re-watch of the series probably 20 times, and then buy all the books etc. Now, I don't have the time. What I have some time for is: writing.
> 
> I hope you enjoy this, and I hope it isn't a too common story that you've read it a hundred times before. So, let's go! Tell me what you think of it :)

The sandy dunes of Jakku stretched for miles before her as the sun burned down on her with a fury she’d buried a long time ago within herself. Her limbs ached after a day’s hard work, the familiar aching of muscles settling like an uncomfortable melancholy in the pit of her stomach. Many people had told her not to return here – there was no need for her to hide herself away from him. She no longer had to run. That was precisely the reason she had to return here, to find that person she was before him.

It was hard to motivate to others why she would return to the place where she had once been a slave. The working conditions were gruelling, even if she was a voluntary worker now, and the memories of the place were far from pleasant. Leia had begged her not to give up on her son, tried to keep that glimmer of Ben alive inside of Rey for as long as she could. Until all hope was lost.

For Rey, hope had been lost a long time ago.

There was nothing left for her to do but to find a way to survive with what had been. An almost life of almost something that never came to pass. They said there was too much Anakin in Ben, but Rey knew it wasn’t his grandfather’s ghost that beckoned him to the dark side. Inclination towards tyranny wasn’t in anyone’s DNA. It had been an excuse, a trap for him to fall into when his fear got too big. Darkness offered corrupted clarity, a straight line to walk and guide him on when the light was just a struggle to keep alive. 

That same struggle between the dark and light played a quiet battle within her each day as she climbed high into shells of old ships to find hidden treasures to trade for sustenance. It was only survival that mattered on this planet. Few joys were to be found, but then again people were too busy to feel anything at all. The food was barely food, just fuel to get through another day. If she didn’t get enjoyment out of the food there was no one around to question it, and even if they were the blandness of it would give them no reason to question her. 

These days she kept her head low and did what she had to do. When she left D’Qar after too long of trying to find something to keep her there it had been a mad dash towards the place which she’d reluctantly left years ago. She’d cut herself off from the Force, she hadn’t even known it was possible, and hadn’t it been for the Rebels she’d seen on Jakku she was sure the galaxy would have declared her dead by now. Sometimes she thought about reaching out, finding the tendrils of the Force that would lead her to Leia just to tell her that she was alright. But, she knew it was too dangerous; and it would have been a lie. There was no way she could be alright now.

Jakku was no place to run to when you were alright, especially not with her history. But, as the sun scorched her the bare skin that peeked out between the protective wrappings on her arms and the vest she worse, she didn’t feel lost here. She wasn’t drifting at sea anymore. Now, that was all she could ask for.

The first time she saw him had been on this planet. He’d been younger, but he’d marched towards her with the same purpose in his stride as he’d always had. Even then, before she knew of the force, she’d sensed the clouds of dark crowding around him, demons preparing to strike at any show of vulnerability. Jedi were fables in her head then. They were in stories told around a fire pit for the young scavengers needing stories of good heroes to keep their faith of the world intact just a little longer. 

Then he came into her life. He’d been huge back then, too. Tall and broad, his presence demanding everyone’s attention and acquiescence. At first, she had submitted herself to the unquestionable force that warned her of the terrible things he could do long before she even knew how true that was. Submission was however not her forte. Despite having been a slave for most of her life she at least got something out of keeping her head down with Unkar Plutt. This man had nothing to offer her. Submission had no purpose for her, she gained nothing from it with him.

Instead of backing down, lowering her head, or averting her eyes, she had squared her shoulders and looked back up at him. For minutes, they had simply stared at each other, faces and bodies unmoving. Something had pushed against her mind, a tickled curious caress that pulled away as quickly as it had appeared. Despite not knowing anything about the force she’d known it was him. There was a signature of it that felt familiar and like the man who stood in front of her. 

Then, he’d cracked a smile – he used to smile a lot back then, and said “I know someone who will want to meet you, Rey.”

Her name on his tongue was familiar. On this planet most people knew each other, and after almost fifteen years it was probable that she’d been mentioned by another scavenger to him. Still, she was nothing but a scavenger, a little girl abandoned by parents who could no longer care for her. Why someone off-planet would take an interest in her, she didn’t know. 

It had been so long ago, yet no time at all seemed to have passed. Some days she thought that if she went back to the place they met, high up on the sand dunes, she’d find his footprints untouched. In the same moment she felt impossibly older, weighed down by the years between then and now, she felt no different. The heart of her 19-year-old self was still humming in her chest. Hopeful, longing, and desperate for belonging. 

To say he’d swept her off her feet would be a perfectly accurate description. Suddenly she had become something, someone with meaning. Someone who would matter in the universe again. Without parents, there’d been no one around to care for her, and there he was adamant that she had purpose again. With a few words, he’d convinced her that she was supposed to be somewhere else.

If she mattered then maybe her family would come for her. 

After years of solitude she’d had no experience with seduction. His easy smiles and compliments, the sudden purpose handed to her without any questions asked. She should have known better. She should have known that a girl like her could never tame a man like him, already full of daggers and anger that despite the smiles and softness felt rough against her. There was something there that she could not deny herself, a power she had been denied her whole life.

“I can give you meaning,” he’d assured her, “if you come with me we can find your parents.” He’d known her loneliness, there was no use in hiding it from her. The truth had poured out of her with ease as he’d fallen into stride beside her as she walked with the day’s work towards Unkar Plutt’s station. He had taken care to walk slowly, her legs too short in comparison to his, and listened to every word with rapt attention.

“I’m waiting for my parents,” she’s said before his offer, “they left me here when I was five… they’re coming back, someday”. Even she could hear the denial in her voice, they were empty words she had repeated to herself time and time again. Tomorrow could be the day, she thought. She would just have to get through one more day on this planet and they would come. 

“How?” She’d questioned him, of course. Not even she knew her parent’s names. The only memory she had was of her mother’s dark hair and the way she smelled – she couldn’t describe it to anyone, but knew as soon as she felt it again she’d know it was her. 

Years later she’d recall that he had never answered, just assured her that with training she could become strong enough to find the belonging she seeks. That was enough, the knowing that she would be reunited with her family again if only she came with him. Had she known who he was she would not have followed him. If she’d paid attention to the gossip of other scavengers, to the politics of the time, she’d have known him as soon as she saw him. The long black robes were out of place on a desert planet like this one, so it would have been easy to recognize him had she known what for look for.

The First Order were easy to spot, if you knew where to look. She did not.

There was some time where she could claim innocence. The galaxy was big, and she knew so little about it. Her whole life had been about survival that most of the stories she’d taken to were the fantastical ones about Chewbacca and Han Solo, politics was rarely a topic scavengers brought up. She knew, the same way everyone knew deep in their souls, that the First Order were bad people who thought authoritarianism was a legitimate and proper way of rule. She knew early on that something wasn’t right about the star ship that Kylo Ren had brought her to, but as Kylo informed her to stay in the quarters she had been assigned for her safety she had little ability to explore her doubts. 

“There are people who will want to use you for your power,” he’d said, explaining why he locked the door behind him each day, and why she was never given a key. “I can keep you safe here like I couldn’t if you stayed on Jakku, but if you leave these quarters I can’t do anything to protect you.”

She revelled in the sun these days. The dry heat was different from the cold sterile environment she’d become used to in space. Even though the hot sand burnt her unaccustomed hands she found it hard to miss that part of space. Piloting a ship was one thing, but the dark rooms with blue tinted lights she’d never miss. At least trapped on Jakku she could tire herself out, work on something. In that room there was nothing but her mind to get trapped inside. 

“It’s for your safety,” he would say, again and again. “Until you are stronger you can’t leave.”

He tried to train her, but was often called away to meetings or assignments that took him away from her in the beginning. It became more and more obvious that as she left Jakku she had trusted the knowledge of her existence into the hands of one person. Only he knew she existed now, where she was. She had to trust him to hold up to his promises, otherwise she’d lose herself and her family forever.

When he came back at the end of the day his body was worn down, the glimmer of light that could be seen inside of him was slowly extinguished each passing day. Scars multiplied on his body without any explanation why. “It’s the only way,” he’d say, but she could get no more out of him as she cleaned the open wounds. 

“Where are your parents?” she asked after weeks, or months. Time passed in a different way out in space, and she had started to figure out how to feel the time in her body. On Jakku it was the sun and her tired body that informed her when to sleep and when to wake, out here she had to rely on clocks to tell her. She’d started sparring with a training droid, tiring herself out enough to be able to fall asleep, but it wasn’t the same as sun exhaustion. 

He’d flinched under her touch, not because the cleaning substance hurt him, but from the question. “What about them?” He asked, his eyes steely and distant. 

“Where are they?” she repeated her question. She knew he was quite a few years older than her, about ten years she thought, but still young enough to need his parents in his life. It was unfathomable to her that a child would chose to not be around his parents. 

“They’re…” he stared into the wall above her shoulder, “a disappointment.” He huffed as she raised her eyebrows to urge him to continue. “They sent me away to my uncle as soon as they could.” He shrugged her hands off his shoulder, and put on his shirt. 

“But they’re alive,” she said, carefully assembling the small medical kit she’d used to patch him up again. 

“My mother… yes.” He turned his back towards her, occupying his hands with picking up the plates they’d eaten from to be cleaned. She knew, even without reaching out towards him with her mind like he’d taught her, that he wasn’t being entirely truthful. 

“If I knew my mother was alive I’d do whatever it takes to see her again,” she knew he wanted her to drop it, but this was the one thing she would, could not, drop. He had family out there in the galaxy, the most important thing she’d ever known, and he wasn’t with them. “When was the last time you saw her?”

“Fifteen years ago,” he said without missing a beat. “Fifteen years and five months,” he paused, “yesterday.” 

“And you know who she is, where she is?” he nodded in reply. “Then go see her.”

It was their first fight. Anger swelled inside of her when she remembered, making her throw her empty satchel down at the ground in frustration outside of the AT-AT she had called her home before and now again. He’d been stubborn in the worst ways, standing his ground on things which made no sense at all.

“They’d abandoned me, Rey,” he had growled, dropping the dishes into the belly of a droid with a harsh clatter. She’d waited for seconds, minutes, for him to understand what he didn’t. Understand who he was talking to. But his chest heaved and his back was still turned to her.

“What do you think my parents did? They didn’t drop me off the next planet over with my uncle, they left me all alone, with no one.” She had stood up, put herself in front of him and jabbed her finger into his chest, her finger finding a still not healed wound; not on purpose but she hadn’t taken care to avoid it. “Yet I’m not the one acting like a petulant teenager, and I’m the one who’s a teen in this room.”

“You don’t understand!” He had started, and maybe she didn’t understand but neither did he. On the issue of parents, she was woefully short on knowledge and understanding. The glimpses of memories she had were mostly feelings and scents that pushed to the forefront of her mind at the strangest moments. Never when she wanted to remember the exact tint the sky had had when she’d woken up from a nap in her mother’s arms was she able to. But sometimes she’d look out over the horizon and there’d be a speck of colour that made her heart constrict with painful longing. 

“Damn you!” she creamed into the desert of Jakku, at the memory of his face growing dark as he’d grabbed her finger and pushed back at her. Far away she saw Teedo halt his slow movements forward to glance in her direction. The disproval of the loud noise was evident even from a distance. Anger swelled further in her gut, like an explosion the scream bubbled out from the bottom of her lungs to fill the desert sky with what she needed out of her.

She didn’t want to remember, but she did. 

It would have been easier if she hated him. Then she would feel less conflicted. Maybe, she would hate herself a little less. 

She stayed longer than she should have. Longer than a good person probably would; but he became the one place in her life that gave her meaning. 

When his own training slowed down, and the conflict within him grew softer and less noticeable, he was more present. There was less of the good, less of the smile she’d seen in him the first days. It became clear to her that she’d been a lone observer of his smiles. Once they disappeared she mourned them like she mourned the absence of her parents. It felt like something big was missing and she needed to stick around to fix it. Leaving, like leaving Jakku, was giving up. 

Days passed in his quarters where they’d spar for hours, or meditate in silence finding each other through the force. Wrapping around the tendrils of each other, and never truly detangling again. What was him passed into her, and what was her seeped into him. It took so long for them to realize how the force that possessed them had become one, and by then it was almost too late. 

Had she stayed longer could she have saved him from being consumed by the darkness inside of him? 

They never truly forgave each other for the fight, but somehow found themselves moving past it. Recognizing the differences in how they felt about their families was a necessity, if they kept fighting they’d both end up going up in flames. She would never accept his choice to distance himself from the family he had because of her history with her own, and he could not accept her forgiveness for her family. It was weakness to forgive those who hurt you, he’d told her once, and she had had to fight against grabbing the staff and knocking him unconscious. 

It was around that time she knew that the darkness inside of him was a side of the force that was luring her in, and with his help it was trying to corrupt her. It whispered in her ear to end him when their fights got explosive, that she could easily escape from this place and take on whatever was outside. She didn’t need to convince anyone of anything, all she needed was her powers that were growing stronger each day. 

She knew it was him. A part of it, at least, was seeping into her from his side of the force connection. It made her hopeful that some of the light that she felt inside the cells of her being could find their way to him. Each morning he left her she’d feel a blooming of light in the dark corners of his soul only to find it extinguished when he returned hours later. Wherever they were, wherever he went, it was no place where good could thrive. 

Sometimes she would ask about the outside world. Ask to see something beyond the walls of this place. He never agreed. Instead he asked her to retrieve memories in his mind of places, other worlds she couldn’t even dream of. He’d offer them up like ripe fruits at the front of his mind. In the beginning, it kept her from diving further into his mind. There were lush forests, cold barren ice planets, planets with just water as far as the eyes could see. All she knew was sand, and his mind offered her was filled with what she had always dreamed of: the entire galaxy. 

She could have gone anywhere in the galaxy, but she came here. She’d been given the opportunity to do just what she had dreamt about then. It was all at her feet. Jakku called her home. Beyond Kylo, this was all she had ever known. The only thing that was familiar to her. 

It was lonely here, and after him that is what she needed to feel. She needed to forget how it felt to be touched. 

She supposed he had experience, but not of the emotional kind. He was stunted, unable connect easily with her through words and the soft touches of her fingers against him. Affection was not something he was good with. The physicality of caring, of emotion and sensuality came more easily. When words were missing hands and kisses could replace them.

After spending months in closed quarters learning the cervices of each other’s being, minds and past largely forbidden territory, physical space was the latest barrier to breach. There had been no one but him for such a long time, of course she fell for him. She would hate herself later for falling so hard, because there’d been no one there to catch her later. She crashed and splintered into thousand jagged pieces.

He was her first. Maybe he would be her last. 

If it hadn’t been for that step, that she gave herself to him and he gave himself for her, maybe it would have turned out differently for the two of them. If they’d waited longer then he might have corrupted her enough to never have to feel the fear and vulnerability that drove him away from her. 

It could have been love, she had felt it inside of him. There had been a softness in all the jagged, a light that took longer to extinguish inside of him. It could have been, but it never was. 

Instead, he possessed her. Tried to, anyway. He stopped giving of himself, too scared to reveal what was inside of him to her now, scared what she would find inside his mind that would drive her away for good. She felt that fear acutely, felt it rise like a demon in his chest. 

Strangely, it was his possessiveness that cut her loose. 

“They know you’re here,” he said one night in a hushed whisper. “I need to get you to my mother.”

In everything that happened before then and after, that had been the moment she’d seen the possibility of good inside of him. The dark wasn’t as dark as it once was, it was grey and lit up in conflict, and she saw herself at one side of it.

In retrospect, she knew she should have pleaded with him to come with her. There was enough of the good that was trying to anchor inside of him that her pleas might have had an effect. The suddenness of it had her scrambling for purchase to understand what was going on – it never crossed her mind to ask him to come with her. 

Was there something she knew then that she had forgotten after all this time? Because she knew herself, she knew that she would have told him to come with her if she thought that was an option. Then she didn’t know, she didn’t know the full extent of his darkness. She didn’t know what he’d done. Rumours like that never reached Jakku. She knew of the terrors of the First Order, but she didn’t know he was one of them.

She should have understood, but until she was rushing through the ship towards the bay and saw the vast numbers of Stormtroopers that walked the hallways she didn’t. When they had boarded a small unassuming spy-ship, it wasn’t official First Order, she had collapsed on one of the two seats in the cramped cock-pit.

“You’re…. the First Order.” He had snapped his head back to her as he piloted the ship into hyper drive. Something fell across his face, a blanket of emotion she couldn’t interpret. 

“Yes,” he turned back to the control panel, keeping his head down. “You didn’t know.” It wasn’t a question. He’d thought she’d known and wanted him as he were.

Why did he save her? After all these years, she couldn’t figure it out. Why he even took her off Jakku in the first place was a mystery. It wasn’t like the man she’d come to know after arriving at Rebel base. At Rebel base she’d been faced with the question she had never known how to answer: who are you?

For years, she had hoped that one day she would be able to answer that question, for a while hoped that Kylo Ren would help her in that quest. The truth came to her on D’Qar, and for as much as she had thought that the truth of who her parents were would set her free, it did no such thing. Luke Skywalker knew of her, had always known she’d been out there in the galaxy. He had never wanted her to escape Jakku.

The knowledge of who her parents were did not make her any less of an orphan. Long ago her parents had been killed by what later became the First Order when they had tried to get their hands on her. Luke saved her, intended to train her, but it had been too late. Ben Solo had turned to the dark side at just fifteen and slaughtered all his Jedi peers. By the time Luke had returned to the planet it had been too late, and all he could do was hide her, pretend that she had been killed by Ben as well. 

After finding out the true story of who Kylo Ren was, of the horrible things he’d done she’d connected with him through the force as she vibrated with anger and all-consuming sadness. _What did you do!?_ She wanted to shake him, hit him over and over with her staff until he became someone else, someone who wasn’t this terrible person. Someone she could have feelings for, because the love she felt for him felt icky in her blood. 

_I killed them because I had to,_ his calm response had been. She could imagine him drumming his fingers against the table in boredom, like she’d seen him do so often. _It was them, me, or all of us._

_That doesn’t make it right!_ She had shut him out, she couldn’t take his excuses. Of all the choices, he had he always chose the easy way out, the one that benefited him the most. He didn’t fight the darkness within him, the one she could feel luring at the back of her mind as her anger flared up. It would be easy to just kill him, it said, she could have killed him when she figured out who he was. It would have been easy.

Getting to know his mother, a feisty senator that never apologized for her son but still loved him dearly, she understood Kylo even less. The woman was far from easy, but she was not short on love. Maybe it had been different when she was younger, when she was still figuring out how to be a mother to a broody boy with a temper and a senator at the same time. Though she had fought a lot with Kylo’s father, a man who would storm out in a huff and return hours later with a kiss for Leia’s cheek, there was never a shortage of love.

Leia never downplayed her shortcomings as a mother, but whatever she had done it was not her fault that her son became who he was. “It was Anakin,” Leia said sometimes, a sad sigh would escape her as she did. Rey wanted to reach out then, say something like it wasn’t his blood that made him who he was, it was how easily he succumbed to his fear. How easily he validated it. How he avoided questioning it. The First Order said they had a solution to all the galaxy’s problems, and with their rule they could bring order and peace to the galaxy. 

He was as seduced by the First Order as she had been with him. He said he’d give her what she wanted and she followed without question. If she’d stayed would she had been as seduced by the First Order as he had become? 

Why did he hide her from them? 

He didn’t make sense. 

It wasn’t Anakin that turned Ben to the dark side, anyway. 

She had been nineteen when Kylo found her on Jakku, almost twenty-one when he left her with the Rebels. Twenty-four felt heavy in her bones when she returned to the desert. Five years between then and now. She’d seen him a few times over the past three years, on the other side of enemy lines with his lightsabre lighting up the darkness that engulfed them. Even if she saw him, knew him, he never acknowledged her presence as anything but a Rebel. The connection between them wilted, and she could no longer sense him like she was once able to. It was just emotions now, physical sensations. No words or communication could be held. 

As the sun set over the sand dunes she sat down in the sand outside the AT-AT, thinking of the day she died. As far as the First Order knew, and most of the galaxy, the girl that Kylo Ren was looking for was dead; he had killed her. No one on Jakku knew she was that girl, that was preposterous. She’d disappeared for a few years, that was all. No reason to believe a girl like her had faked her death. She’d left to find her parents and they weren’t out there, so she returned to the only home she had. 

Simple. 

It was easy being simple. 

They’d battled, light sabres crashing and cutting at the trees and plants that surrounded them. Another bigger battle took place further away, but it might as well have been on another planet entirely. 

“Come back with me,” he had pleaded with her, “I will train you.” She had pushed herself away from him, flying several feet back with the force of it. “We can be together again.”

She wanted to scream _never_ , and at the same time she wanted to whisper _yes, I will_. Because after all this time she remembered what it was like to lie in his arms at night with her head resting on his chest. The rhythm of his heartbeat and their breathing would be the only sound in the room. That was the first time in her life since she was left on Jakku that she felt safe. She felt loved. She felt something good. She remembered his kisses, and warm hugs that reminded her of desert heat and took her out of the coldness of the ship. 

Instead, she made a choice.

She lunged at him, emptying her lungs of air with a scream, channelling all the strength she had at taking him down. Once and for all. 

It had gone so fast, and all she remembers feeling before the world went dark was the agonizing searing of flesh where the lightsabre touched her flesh. 

When she woke the first face she saw was Leia. “You’re dead now,” she said. It meant she was safe now, she was out now. 

The rules were simple; cut yourself off from the force the way Luke had taught her. “Don’t use it again, because if you do they will know that you are alive and they will come looking for you”. It was an easy bargain, because what good had come from it, anyway? 

After a few months of recovery, she took a beaten-up ship back to Jakku, happy to discover that her AT-AT had been left untouched. The next months she spent fixing the damage that had been made to the ship after years of neglect, patching up holes and electronics where sand had gotten into the machinery. This was what she knew. The ship she had taken to Jakku she sold for food, never planning to leave this place again. No good would come out of that. 

She wouldn’t starve again, at least not for a long time. As long as she was frugal and kept working to keep her supply up it would be a long time before she came upon hard times again. That was what kept her going. Work, staying alive, and the idea of not struggling anymore. 

As she started to pack up everything to head inside the AT-AT for the night she spotted a tall figure walking towards her. It was far enough away for her not to see more than the silhouette. She squinted her eyes – it was obviously a human being from the way it walked and the outlines of its body, probably a man by the broadness of its shoulder. 

Deciding to head inside to leave the dishes from her meal on the cooking bench, she hurried in to make it out in time to meet up with the man. Few people ventured out here on purpose, but with the straight line he was walking in, it was obvious he was heading towards her. 

When she came outside again the figure was closer, just a couple of feet away from her. He was just as tall as he had always been, but this time dressed in tanned beige clothes – not the black of the First Order or the grey of the Resistance. It looked odd on him, it definitely wasn’t his colour and that almost made her smile. 

“Kylo,” she whispered, dropping the hand that had shielded her vision from the sun. What was he doing here?

“No, Ben,” he said, holding out his hand as if offering it to her to shake. Like it was the first time they met.


End file.
